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RTFO (Read the Friggin Order) by Stephen+Samuel · 2004-06-30 09:21 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

E-gerbil.net appears to have some of the documents from the case (mostly plaintif docs, it seems). This includes the court order in question.

Between the Plaintif case (affidavit) and the restraining order it would appear that NAC is being ordered to do stuf that they would normally do in the process of an orderly customer migration move away.

This includes that during the migrateion, NAI should:

Not arbitrarily cutting off their service.
Not unreasonably raising their rate (at least, not more unreasonably than they already have)
Not messing with their BGP
Not downgrading their service
No suddenly assign their IP's to somebody else.
Not physically prevent the move from taking place (i.e. not prevent the movement of customer equipment).

The allegations of the plaintifs appears to be that NAI:

Has jacked the prices unreasonably in the last year.
Has held the customer's service levels at randsom.
Has (repeatedly) threatened to downgrade and cut off service
Has unreasonably demanded customer lists
Has bargained in bad faith WRT the details of Pegasus' move

etc. etc. etc.

This is essentialy a contracts case, not an internet case. There's nothing that I can see in the order that wouldn't be done by an isp acting in good faith during a customer's move... except for the fact hat NAI is accused of not acting in good faith.

It should also be noted here that, although a customer doesn't own the IP allocations of it's service provider, neither does the service provider. It's really a public trust, and the service provider is generally expected to act in good faith with respect to providing these services. If Pegasus wasn't accusing NAI of acting in bad faith, I doubt that the court would have issued the injunction in question.

RTFO (Read the Friggin Order) by Stephen+Samuel · 2004-06-30 09:21 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

E-gerbil.net appears to have some of the documents from the case (mostly plaintif docs, it seems). This includes the court order in question.

Between the Plaintif case (affidavit) and the restraining order it would appear that NAC is being ordered to do stuf that they would normally do in the process of an orderly customer migration move away.

This includes that during the migrateion, NAI should:

Not arbitrarily cutting off their service.
Not unreasonably raising their rate (at least, not more unreasonably than they already have)
Not messing with their BGP
Not downgrading their service
No suddenly assign their IP's to somebody else.
Not physically prevent the move from taking place (i.e. not prevent the movement of customer equipment).

The allegations of the plaintifs appears to be that NAI:

Has jacked the prices unreasonably in the last year.
Has held the customer's service levels at randsom.
Has (repeatedly) threatened to downgrade and cut off service
Has unreasonably demanded customer lists
Has bargained in bad faith WRT the details of Pegasus' move

etc. etc. etc.

This is essentialy a contracts case, not an internet case. There's nothing that I can see in the order that wouldn't be done by an isp acting in good faith during a customer's move... except for the fact hat NAI is accused of not acting in good faith.

It should also be noted here that, although a customer doesn't own the IP allocations of it's service provider, neither does the service provider. It's really a public trust, and the service provider is generally expected to act in good faith with respect to providing these services. If Pegasus wasn't accusing NAI of acting in bad faith, I doubt that the court would have issued the injunction in question.

RTFO (Read the Friggin Order) by Stephen+Samuel · 2004-06-30 09:21 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

E-gerbil.net appears to have some of the documents from the case (mostly plaintif docs, it seems). This includes the court order in question.

Between the Plaintif case (affidavit) and the restraining order it would appear that NAC is being ordered to do stuf that they would normally do in the process of an orderly customer migration move away.

This includes that during the migrateion, NAI should:

Not arbitrarily cutting off their service.
Not unreasonably raising their rate (at least, not more unreasonably than they already have)
Not messing with their BGP
Not downgrading their service
No suddenly assign their IP's to somebody else.
Not physically prevent the move from taking place (i.e. not prevent the movement of customer equipment).

The allegations of the plaintifs appears to be that NAI:

Has jacked the prices unreasonably in the last year.
Has held the customer's service levels at randsom.
Has (repeatedly) threatened to downgrade and cut off service
Has unreasonably demanded customer lists
Has bargained in bad faith WRT the details of Pegasus' move

etc. etc. etc.

This is essentialy a contracts case, not an internet case. There's nothing that I can see in the order that wouldn't be done by an isp acting in good faith during a customer's move... except for the fact hat NAI is accused of not acting in good faith.

It should also be noted here that, although a customer doesn't own the IP allocations of it's service provider, neither does the service provider. It's really a public trust, and the service provider is generally expected to act in good faith with respect to providing these services. If Pegasus wasn't accusing NAI of acting in bad faith, I doubt that the court would have issued the injunction in question.

Take a look at the documents.... by sakshale · 2004-06-29 11:19 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

There are two sides to every story. Let's /. another site: nac-case

missing the point compleatly by barryhunter · 2004-06-29 09:39 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

I'm no expert, but actually reading a good deal of documentation about the case, it seems to me that the person making the original claim that this is against Internet policy (Alex Rubenstein from the company having the TRO made against them -NAC), is making a bigger deal out of what is really meant by the TRO.

To me it seems that the TRO (temporally restraining order) is saying that NAC, shouldn't 'maliciously' affect the IP's of the plaintiff, just like it wouldn't with normal customers. I agree it might be a bit heavy handed in its wording, and saying it cant be done.

I think that its just saying that NAC shouldn't treat the plaintiff any different to other customers: they are still a client while they want to move their services to the new provider, the plaintiff has said that it is still willing to pay for services until all services are successfully moved over to the new provider.

The TRO is Temporally (its in the name) and hence CANT be used to enforce a permantant movement of IP's to somewhere else. All the court wants to ensure that NAC still provide Internet access while the plaintiff is still a (paying) Customer.

I don't actually see where the plaintiff is trying to actually move IP's away from NAC, they just want to ensure the ones they currently have aren't disrupted, until the plaintiff has moved to the new provider.

I'm sorry if this message repeats itself a bit but i want to make my point clear.
DISCLAIMER: this is what I imply from the stuff I've read (at This page), I might well have missed something .

Before everyone jumps off the handle... by deblau · 2004-06-29 09:30 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

Too late, I know. Read the court documents before you go nuts. From the affidavit, UCI is a web hosting company / bandwidth & IP reseller. The IP addresses weren't 'theirs' either, they were already allocated to UCI customers, who are smaller resellers and community ISPs. This means that they can't just 're-IP' everything. It also means they are locked into a long-term relationship with NAC. NAC allegedly used this lock-in to alter the terms of their upstream contract unilaterally, charge outrageous rates ($18,000/month for electricity, etc), and generally be fucktards. According to the affidavit, at least.

UCI is trying to protect their customers. There is nothing in the affidavit to suggest that they don't understand networking, or that they are incompetent.

Slashdot Users should get a clue by 4iedBandit · 2004-06-29 07:31 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

So most everyone here is up in arms about how stupid this is from the technical point. I've no argument about that. However most everyone here didn't bother to read anything abou the case, and in fairness Slashdot itself contributed to that by not linking to the plantiffs case:

Read the Plantiff's case!

There's more to it then some bum customer thinking their IP's are like phone numbers. It's about the colocation provider trying to drive a web hosting provider out of business before they can move to a different facility.

READ THE AFFIDAVIT!!! This is a contract dispute and some pretty ugly (and shady) business practices by the colo provider.

The restraining order just means the colo provider can't cut the service off before the customer can move. Yes it does also provide for the IP's to be moved with the customer, however I think that's a side effect. (And I agree that's bad.) However read the whole case and you will see that the customer just wants to get out and keep his business alive, while the colo provider is trying to put him into bankruptcy.

If you want to knee-jerk at something, knee-jerk about the colo squeezing the life out of their customer. I pity anyone here who is using that colo.

Follow the links, follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-29 05:44 · Score: 0 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

This is not a case of the plaintiff or judge not understanding IP addresses and Internet routing.

Pegasus Web Technologies hosts about 3000 sites in Net Access Corporation's co-location facility. Pegasus used NAC's IP addresses instead of acquiring their own. They even re-sold NAC's IP addresses to Pegasus customers. Now Pegasus wants to move to a different co-location facility.

Moving all those sites (with many using third party DNS providers) to new address space is going to be painful and disruptive. Rather than explain to their customers how they mucked up, Pegasus is suing NAC.

Read the case yourself: NAC-Case

And make sure Pegasus isn't your hosting company... ;-)

Original posting is by the defendant by Animats · 2004-06-29 05:40 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

The original posting on the North American Network Operators Group list is by Alex Rubenstein, who is the CEO of the defendant company.

The case documents are entertaining reading. See especially paragraph 11 of this filing, the "offer you can't refuse": "In fact Alex Rubenstein essentially asked me when I was going to give up, sell the business to him, and come to work for NAC".

This is all so New Jersey.

Original posting is by the defendant by Animats · 2004-06-29 05:40 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

The original posting on the North American Network Operators Group list is by Alex Rubenstein, who is the CEO of the defendant company.

The case documents are entertaining reading. See especially paragraph 11 of this filing, the "offer you can't refuse": "In fact Alex Rubenstein essentially asked me when I was going to give up, sell the business to him, and come to work for NAC".

This is all so New Jersey.

Re:What benifit to the person that brought the sui by ameoba · 2004-06-29 05:37 · Score: 3, Informative · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

Well, if you read the court documents, you'll see that the guy suing the ISP is in a bad position; he's selling webhosting to people who sell webhosting to others on servers coloed at the ISP. He's a useless middleman in the deal & has refused attempts at being bought out by the ISP already.

The basis of his case is that he is completely dependant upon the ISP to do his business & they're rasing his rates to a point where he can't keep his business going, possibly in order to force him to sell. I'm not going to say that the ISP is being nice, but they're not entirely out of line.

Even with the network being temporarily re-routed, this guy is fucked; he has a single supplier for what he's selling & his supplier wants to start selling directly to his customers. If he was smart, he'd have set up his own datacenter by now.

Do your homework. by Suppafly · 2004-06-29 05:10 · Score: 1 · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras/nac-case actually read the documents filed in the case.

It would appear that this judgement is somewhat reasonable considering that NAC (the ISP) dicked the customer around, although if I were they judge I would have just made NAC continue to provide service to the customer for a while longer instead of messing with re-assigning ip addresses between isp's.

Re:Details of the case: by the_demiurge · 2004-06-29 05:06 · Score: 3, Informative · on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

Try:
affidavit 1
affidavit 2
affidavit 3
remand
restraining order

It looks like the judge belived that NAC was screwing UCI pretty hard and trying to make them go under. Since UCI is a webhosting company, if they didn't have control of the IP addresses for the time it takes them to get set up at through a different net provider, they would break contract with third parties through no fault of their own. This is a pretty tough case and I think this is less about UCI wanting to have "portable" IP addresses than wanting to keep their buisiness from being shut down as they transition.